By: M Zaman
Sly and stealthy, like your other brethren
you too have jumped from host to human;
(an animal, rogue with a wrathful ruse,
and pillager of habitats - all non-human).
A befitting response, a tiny strand of RNA;
a life; with a limitless capacity to mutate,
morph and live; gargantuan in gangly;
you let man know the limits of human
indigence; and of all those Anthropocene
Sins, a brilliant riposte to limitless insult.
This Earth is but a blue dot; precious and a
verdant ball, living and suspended; it is to be
shared; and thank you for reminding me that
you, too, minuscule though, exist.
A poet and an accidental physician; he lives with his lovely wife on the Raquette River in a quaint college town on the foothills of the majestic Adirondacks, enchantingly irenic with rivulets full of toothsome water, and hills rarely trodden. His poems are published or accepted for publication in the High Shelf Press, the Stardust Review, the Black Horse Review and the Cathexis North West Press. He also writes in his native language Bangla. His most recent publication in Bangla is a translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
"It is a strange and challenging existence of ours, but it is not the first time; and WE, the sapiens will blithely march forward to waylay the precarious natural balance once again. Last night my sister-in-law called to let me know that my little brother (youngest and healthiest who still runs marathons) in an ER in Long Island after suffering from cough and fever for about two weeks. I could not sleep. Our older daughter is working from home in New Orleans, and our little one is in Seattle. They are stranded. A deep anxiety has set in. The Earth, as Carl Sagan once said, is “a mote suspended on a sunbeam”; maybe it’s a time to pivot to a different cultural narrative."